Friday, February 8, 2008
Access Has Widgets For Mobiles
Posted by Jon Westfall in "SOFTWARE" @ 07:37 PM
"Japan's Access, the company behind the NetFront browser that is used in hundreds of phones on sale worldwide, has developed a widget system for the latest version of the browser and will demonstrate it next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Much like those on Apple's Mac OSX or Windows Vista, the NetFront widgets can do things like provide updated weather information, news headlines, favorites from YouTube, local maps, and photo feeds from Web sites. The intention is that users will be able to download widgets for sites like Google Maps, YouTube, and Wikipedia so those sites become services available directly from the desktop. In the case of some sites, say an auction site where prices change all the time, the widget will be able to provide constantly updated information to the desktop so the user doesn't have to go through a browser to the Web site."
The concept of having up to date information at a glance on a mobile device certainly isn't new - it's actually one of the selling points of the devices! But having one framework that would let me have a weather widget, a news widget, and more all in one location (and all of them working the same) does sound interesting. Until then I'll just continue on with a half-dozen third party programs!
The concept of having up to date information at a glance on a mobile device certainly isn't new - it's actually one of the selling points of the devices! But having one framework that would let me have a weather widget, a news widget, and more all in one location (and all of them working the same) does sound interesting. Until then I'll just continue on with a half-dozen third party programs!
